


pro tempore

by perennials



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: M/M, after 23419491 years, our two favorite gays meet again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 19:59:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6921001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/pseuds/perennials
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Please wait a while longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pro tempore

**Author's Note:**

> hey this is usotsuki (the one obsessed with big words and space metaphors/similes); i changed my username is all, continue on

Killua finds Gon in a sea of faces that don't matter.

 

Gon doesn't notice him, at first. He is standing outside a quaint little shop at the end of the street where sunset-dusted sapphires twinkle like stars in the display front. For a second Killua almost misses him, comes so close to brushing past with his ground-eyes and ceiling-thoughts that he can feel the panic flare in his chest even after he pulls out of the crowd's flow, stops walking.

 

Reality stills, waiting for him to speak.

 

"...Gon?"

 

Killua's voice is disbelieving, searching, gets carried away by swirls of chilly air. He has read road signs wrong and mistaken paper dolls for people one too many times, and though his gut tells him _you are right this time_ he cannot help but imagine otherwise.

 

"Gon." His voice is louder this time.

 

The figure turns slowly, muted features rustling into clarity.

 

"Killua?"

 

Gon's silhouette splinters in the fading light.

 

//

 

They are: collarbones that bruise, words that cut, looks that last longer than staccato beats.

 

They are: elbows and knees not touching, thoughts wandering far and wide, lips scissored shut.

 

They are taller now, older now. When Killua brushes the back of his hand against Gon's he jerks away, as if Killua's touch is fire.

 

They are older now, quieter now. Gon tries to explain it away, but the words catch in his throat like wire gauze. His windpipe blossoms into cardinal red.

 

 _You are not fire; I am not afraid_ , he wants to say. _I am not afraid._

 

_I have no right to be afraid._

 

Where flights of playful conversation once exchanged hands with a childlike ease only the ashes of a campfire (they are twelve again and living in halcyon days) lay scattered around like residual waste. Their sentences have sublimed, become punctuated with more pauses than actual punctuation, ends tapering off into stretches of silence that run for miles into the distance. For all his experience dealing with cat-eyed ladies and poison-tipped swords, for all the riveting speeches and honest confessions he's given, even Gon finds himself at a loss for words in front of this fairy-mirage.

 

Killua is perched on an upturned cart with one shoulder pressed to the wall; Gon is an arm's length away. There is enough space between them for a child's bird-small frame to fold itself into the darkness. There is enough space between them to fit three years' worth of silence and so much more.

 

At seventeen and some they are more angular and less curved, cut sharper (like glass, maybe) against the vestiges of light on their skin. Killua is still a gallimaufry of worst-case scenarios and flighty limbs, Gon is still liquid amber and restlessness brimming just under the surface. They are still young, still haunted.

 

The narrow alley is dark, teeming with uneasy energy that ripples through the air in cold currents, sending shivers tripping down the telephone wires of their spines. It is not a friendly, inviting place, the secluded spot Gon has chosen.

 

But Killua is here, close enough to touch, close enough to push aside— less tangible than the darkness that grasps at the ends of his hair yet more real than the moon lights that cascade down the smooth planes of his skin.

 

Gon cannot bring himself to look away.

 

//

 

There is a metronome in his head, ticking steadily, resolutely, a crab claw-scatter of clicks reverberating through his skull like catcalls. There is a metronome in Gon's head, ticking furiously, loudly, and Killua looks like he is going to disappear into the background like a back prop so Gon ventures:

 

"Where's Alluka?"

 

The words taste bitter like an alkali, like a mistake.

 

Killua's gaze dips below the crescent curve of his clavicle. "Happy," he replies, a throw-away sentence on the stagnant breeze.

 

Gon pauses, lets another thin layer of silence settle like dust between their unmoving shadows. Toes absentmindedly at the dirt around his feet. Tries to find words, and fails.

 

He opens his mouth to say something more but Killua beats him to the next spill of broken poetry.

 

"Where are you?"

 

//

 

Killua, is all white lights and shifting sands and specter smile. Melancholy dances a slow, simmering waltz through his bones, echoing faintly in every subtle movement he makes.

 

The lie falls easily from Gon's lips— like a truth, only prettier.

 

"I'm right here," he answers ruefully/truthfully.

 

A cast-iron curl of skepticism tips over the bridge of Killua's nose and sprawls across his features like black paint. Slowly, hesitantly, he lifts his hand, reaching across the black hole between them, and brings it to hover over Gon's eyes. Gon sees black sharpie ink on the pads of Killua's fingers.

 

"Are you," Killua murmurs distractedly, less a question than a statement.

 

"I am," he affirms in a low voice.

 

"But I can't _see_ you. It's too bloody dark, Gon. Why didn't you take us out somewhere where we could see—"

 

_Stars?_

 

—he doesn't say, stars _, you are melting into the atmosphere like a forgotten patch of ten p.m. sky, corporeal being turned asterism, syzygy above everything that weighs more than a pin-prick of silver,_ stars _, I am ghost but you are living specter, animated corpse, lungs filled with lead iodide and glitter,_ stars _, you spin on the world's axis in perpetuum and I am going blind trying to see where yesterday ends and you begin._

 

As abruptly as his spiel starts, it breaks off, all jagged ends and uneven corners. Something in Killua shifts, rotational symmetry losing shape in the croon of his features; gently he cups his hand over Gon's eyes, presses him backwards while he leans forward.

 

"I'm sorry," comes the dead apology from Gon's parted lips as he tilts his chin, but whatever other lingering sentiments that may have remained evaporate in the face of the suffocating warmth that folds him in like a cloud.

 

Killua kisses him at the corner of his lips like it's code for something other than _I love you_.

 

For a fraction of a second they are gilded in gold— Killua's hand drops like a dead weight to his side and the sunshine boy opens his eyes but Killua's are fluttered shut to keep drops of midnight from leaking out, he does not see the cocktail mix of one part confusion and two parts surprise and four parts pain that streaks across his face like a comet. Yet, somehow, Gon's fingers are gentle when they circle around Killua's wrist.

 

Killua pulls away. "You're going to leave," he realizes, resignation coloring his voice.

 

"I am." Gon smiles, and it's a funny kind of smile, the sort that's something of a cross between relief, clear as day, and a profound, deep-rooted sadness, one you'd be more likely to see on drama serials and in contrived love triangles than in reality.

 

Despite everything, Killua's traitorous heart skips a beat at the sight.

 

\\\

 

"I can't stay" is the only explanation Gon seems able (or willing) to provide. He says it again and again until the audio file breaks and his voice breaks and everything turns into silence.

 

Killua looks at him with sad eyes, a question hanging unspoken in their crystalline depths.

 

“I’m sorry,” Gon repeats, quietly. Already he has begun fidgeting like a toddler overdosed on sugar, legs tapping nervously, hands twitching erratically.

 

If Killua could kiss the ghosts right out of Gon’s shadow, he thinks, he would.

 

But he can’t. He doesn’t know how to.

 

\\\

 

Killua thinks about these things long after Gon has vanished into the depths of the watery night.

 

He thinks about: how soft Gon's mouth was, how he would like to kiss him again (maybe).

 

He thinks about: the two-centimeter difference in their heights now, and whether Gon will be the taller one  ~~if they meet again~~  the next time they meet (probably).

 

He thinks about: the way he twined their fingers together like a promise, kissed the intersection points as if each one would become a magical, unbreakable seal ( ~~fragile~~  ethereal).

 

 _We'll meet again_ , it had meant for the second time, _we'll meet again and again and again until we're ready to stop meeting and ready to start_ being _something more than a heartache._

 

And Killua is no daydreamer, but he believes it.

 

So he lets him go.

**Author's Note:**

> when will i stop  
> well, personal issues with life aside, thanks for readin. kudos, comments, and you my reader friend are cool, but comments are like the coolest of them all. oh yeah and it's kind of one a.m. in the morning and i am kind of falling asleep in my chair so if i missed any grammar/spelling errors/messed up somewhere lemme know and i'll get to it asap. thanks
> 
> have a good one


End file.
